Hi guys,

If any of you use/used these (facebook, youtube or soundcloud) to self-promote your music, could you share your experiences/thoughts on this (good? not effective? not appropriate?)

What other sites do you recommend as nice places to self-promote/share your music for free?

Thanx in advance

 

I guess more than "where" the question is "how." I'm not that experienced in self promotion, but if a place to promote your stuff reads "free," there's no reason to avoid posting your material unless there are licensing and/or post-use fees and restrictions in the small print. However, getting you music to the top of a platform goes beyond web acceptance. This is a music production forum, so it goes without saying that the music needs to be at its peak in quality (composition, hooks, mixing and mastering); otherwise, it will never reach the top. It's also important to have networking skills and a people's personality. If you can't reach audiences in live gigs, it's unlikely you'll advance much further in the virtual stage, though I could be wrong on this one. What you read all around the web is that you have to think of yourself as a product provider, and as such offer your clientele something they want to buy and come back to it again. How to do it, that's the million-dollar question.

 

Thanks mercurysoto for giving your view on the subject.

 

wrong! think of Enigma, Jeremy soule, Celldweller, Blue Stahli and others "virtual" guys.
I guess this question is alll about of money - how much you can spent on PR and marketing sshit to try to reach highs.
or
as another way some guys doing so much PR shit by crazy and idiotic models of behavior, trying to be a jerks and get some attention.
but following 2nd way you probably should sell your soul.
but no one cares about your karma and your soul - that's all about of money.
so this is a question - how far you can to go?
and sometimes music matters, but you need to make cool tracks

 

Last edited: Oct 13, 2017

I am no expert/experienced person in music creation and promotion, I've started attempting to create music (if you can call that :D) only in the last year or so. I have been trying to utilize all the three platforms that you have mentioned in OP (along with good-old email and twitter), with varying results. Among the three, maximum response I usually get is, through Facebook (I've created my own artist page and promote my works through that page via my network of friends and their friends). Youtube is the least in terms of feedback & footfall while soundcloud is in between. My strategy is to contact influencers (i focus on creating 80s inspired music) through email (radio stations, bloggers, podcasters, sometime creating threads in the forums like these, indie label producers, popular artists). I generally make an humble request to them, to have a listen to my works (mail them my tracks in zip) and drop a word or two in their timelines/profile pages/podcast/radio, if possible.

This approach has worked well for me, so far. My songs have got a great coverage over the last month or so in the local radio station (Radiocity Electronica). Watermelonbanzai (an influencial synthwave related blog) reviewed my debut album and gave great boost to the visibility of my bandcamp page. Just last week, one of my (not so good) earlier song got featured in the #BeyondSynth podcast (in fact, opened the show) for the month, there is also a reputed indie record label wanting to feature one of my recent track in their upcoming compilation album.

IMHO, contacting the influencers directly through email and creating a positive word of mouth through them, works well for me.

Cheers!

 

I’ve used all three in conjunction, and most people do, because indeed it’s free. Their effectiveness however depends entirely on you, because it all boils down to one simple rule : “Don’t expect to get out of it more than you’re willing to put into it”. Meaning that if all you intend to do is promote your own tracks without ever showing interest for other people’s work, nothing will come from it ... And I do mean genuine interest, not just pressing “like”, “follow” or leaving a “dope” or “awesome” comment on as many tracks and artists as possible without actually listening to any of them. Sure, some people will be playing the same game and will respond accordingly (merely returning the favor without giving a toss for your music either) ... But if you take that route all you’ll achieve is artificially boosting your personal stats (possibly flattering your ego along the way in an equally fake manner), which is obviously pointless. Your effective fan-base (i.e.; those potentially interested in buying your music and turning up at your gigs, or - more simply - those who will come back for more) will remain at a big fat zero. There’s no cheating in the long run, even if your music happens to be good ... End of rant

 

Soundcloud & AudioSex.
I used all 3, but I like Soundcloud best.
I don't plan to hit it big in music. It's just a hobby that makes me happy and I try to make it reach other people who may like it. But I'm not looking for superstardom or a huge fanbase. AS is only 20,000-50,000 people, maybe. On SC, I've probably got 225 followers. Lately my SC's been pretty dead, but I still make songs that aren't released there.
Anyways,so here I go with more self promotion lol:

 

Last edited by a moderator: Oct 14, 2017

I'll answer to this from my experience as I've used (and still am) all those platforms for my business. It's not creating music for labels, but it's close enough... mainly sound design, commercial stuff for radio & TV, short music segues and such.

SoundCloud: I use paid PRO accounts and it's great for audio distribution everywhere. I'm talking websites, other social networks, sharing links via email etc... The downside is their tight policy for taking down anything their new algorithm considers copyright infrigement. And sooo many times it's wrong. I had several situations taking down my own original audio and SoundCloud's help department is awful on this matter.

Facebook: Always great results for reaching audience through nice fan page. There's some mainteance work you need to do to keep your page fresh and interesting. New posts, connections, and targeted paid advertising also pays off. If you connect it with your Twitter account, you get even more cross-platform wise.

Youtube: Not so much, at least for me. YT is way down on my list for promotion... again, for my type of production.

Probably the most important part is Networking. Connect with as much people as you can and spread your work. Be polite and try to answer to comments fast and nice. Try nt to take any trolling personally and just ignore it.

Hope this helps a bit, good luck!